


spaceprincesswrites reader-insert one shots

by too_much_coffee



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BECAUSE THAT'S ALL I EVER GET REQUESTS FOR, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, M/M, Soulmate AU, college student!reader, gender neutral reader, jason and tim are friends who give each other relationship advice, jason is a dumb nerd, jason is shy and self-concious, not that i'm complaining, the boy needs some love and heaven knows dc isn't giving it to him, this is just a bunch of jason/reader shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 10:35:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20274511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/too_much_coffee/pseuds/too_much_coffee
Summary: A collection of reader-insert stuff from my old tumblr, @spaceprincesswrites. Multi-fandom. Gender neutral reader. All relatively SFW (some suggestive themes in certain chapters, but no actual smut).





	1. Study Break (Jason Todd/Reader)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Indulgent fluff with Jason and a reader who is in college, requested by an anon on tumblr.

Your head swims and your eyelids feel like they’re weighted down with lead. You stare at your computer screen, where a cheerful little pop-up informs you that you’ve just submitted your last essay for the semester. Finally. 

You lean back in your chair, stretching your arms high above your head and letting out a soft groan. Four essays in one weekend was enough to make even William Shakespeare feel like his brain was melting out his ears. Maybe you should have started on them earlier, but you’d had… other things to worry about.

As if summoned by your thoughts, other things chooses that exact moment to stroll in through the front door, looking as tired as you feel but with a grin on his face nonetheless. He’s healing up nicely from the fight that scared you half to death last week, no longer walking with a limp, the bruising around his left eye and across his jaw faded, the swelling all but gone. His grin widens when he sees you seated at the kitchen table, accompanied by your laptop, cell phone, and a handful of used coffee cups.

He kicks the door shut and tosses his helmet onto the couch before coming over to drape himself over the back of your chair, burying his face in your hair. You feel his lips move against your scalp as his arms settle around your shoulders. “Hey, babe. Finished with essays?”

You nod, your hands floating up to rest on his arms, the leather of his jacket sleeves cold under your fingers. “Just barely. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have nightmares about Microsoft Word tonight. How was work?”

“Overwhelming.” He dips to kiss your forehead before sliding away, lowering himself into the other chair at the small kitchen table that you share. “Black Mask is on my ass again.” He runs a hand through his dark curls, messy and wild from being confined to a helmet all day. “I might even have to ask you-know-who for help.” 

Concern coils in your chest, a serpent always curled around your heart, squeezing every time you reflect on the constant danger of your boyfriend’s chosen career. If he’s considering going to Bruce, it’s bad.

You lean forward slightly, reaching for his hand. “Should I be worried?”

“Not yet.” Jason takes your hand, lifts it to his mouth, brushes a kiss across the back of your knuckles. “We’re okay.”

He hooks his foot around one of the legs of your chair, dragging you closer until your leg is brushing against his. He leans forward until you can feel his breath rustling your hair. 

“We’re okay,” he repeats, and then he closes the distance, his free hand coming up to cup your head as he kisses you.

When you and Jason first starting dating, all of his kisses were passionate to the point of desperation. He kissed you every time as if he’d never get to again. Now, further into your relationship, he seems to have accepted that you aren’t going anywhere, and he lets himself slow down a little with kisses like this one, soft and gentle, patient and indulgent.

When you break apart, he kisses the tip of your nose before pulling away. He stares at you like a man gazing at the stars, as if he sees an entire universe mapped in your eyes. You prepare yourself for some kind of profound confession or deep sentiment. 

But his eyes slip past you, his expression falling when he sees your laptop screen. “Uh, babe?”

You turn, eyes widening as you read the new pop-up. You slump forward, burying your head in your hands. “The essay didn’t send. Of course it didn’t.” 

You groan, and reluctantly resume your place in front of your laptop. “Just give me a minute. Hopefully this won’t take too long.”

He stands up and pushes his chair back in under the table. “While you’re doing that, I’ll get dinner. Is Italian okay?”

You tilt your head back to look up at him, offering an exhausted smile. “You’re an angel.”

“Don’t tell anyone.” He bends down to kiss your cheek. “I have a reputation to protect.”

“Just go get my ravioli, tough guy.” You roll your eyes, already reopening the file for your last essay.

“As you wish.” 

He’s already out the door before your exhausted brain registers the Princess Bride quote. You shake your head. At least it wasn’t Pride and Prejudice this time.


	2. "You really don't want me as a soulmate." (Jason Todd/Reader)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angst-y Jason soulmate AU requested by an anon on tumblr. Specifically, an AU where everyone feels an invisible magnetic pull towards their partner... but what happens to that bond when one person dies?
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING: major character death, grief, depression, general angst

When Jason was in his early teens, he loved the idea of soulmates. Maybe it was the hopeless romantic in him, too many hours spent poring over books like Pride And Prejudice and The Great Gatsby. Maybe it was because his parents weren’t soulmates, and he was still young enough to convince himself that all of the fighting and insults and viciousness in their relationship was because they just weren’t meant to be – that surely two people who were fated to be together could be nothing but happy. Or maybe he was just a lonely kid, desperate for love and attention, hanging on to the hope that there was someone out there in the great big world who wanted him.

Whatever the reason, he used to leave the house every morning wondering if today was the day that the unseen hands of fate would pull him towards his soulmate. He’d heard some people describe the bond as a magnetic pull, while others said it was more of a hollow ache, the sense that something was missing inside them. To him, it felt like a small but persistent tugging in his chest, like a string was tied around his heart, with someone holding the other end and gently pulling on it. On some days it was stronger than others, and those were the days that his hopes soared the highest, wondering if maybe the person he was meant to be with was right around the corner.

No one could accurately describe the feeling of finding your soulmate, and scientists speculated that it felt different for every person. All anyone knew for sure that it was a rush of endorphins, and that it just felt right. There was no way to miss it or mistake it for something else – when you found your soulmate, you’d know it.

After becoming Robin, he had less time to think about finding his soulmate. Between training and his new “night job” and adjusting to being part of his new family, he hardly had time to sleep, let alone daydream.

After he dies, after the Lazarus Pit brings him back broken and twisted and wrong, he stops thinking about his soulmate at all.

You were fourteen when your bond with your soulmate was severed.

You’d heard about bonds being cut before, of course. Even a bond between soulmates can’t bridge the gap between life and death. But no one had told you about the pain.

You woke up screaming in the middle of the night, covered in a cold sweat and clawing at your chest. It was unlike anything you’d ever felt, as if a hot knife had been plunged right through your heart. Every breath was a struggle, sawing painfully from your too-tight chest, and in that moment you were fully convinced that you were dying.

Your screams and sobs brought your family running to your room, but you hardly registered being gently lifted from bed and carefully changed into warm clothes. You felt disconnected, distant, only aware of the pain in your chest and the overwhelming sense that something was horrifically wrong.

By the time you reached the hospital, the pain had faded to a dull ache, and your breathing had returned to normal. You spent the rest of the night under observation in a hospital bed, being tested for various ailments as a team of doctors pondered about what could possibly send a healthy teenager into cardiac arrest.

It was the hospital’s head psychiatrist who sat you down a few days later, gently explaining that nothing was physically wrong with you, but that people’s bodies sometimes reacted this way when their bond with their soulmate was severed unexpectedly. It was uncommon to see it in someone so young, she told you in a sympathetic tone, but tragedies did sometimes happen. She ended the conversation by gently patting you on the arm and telling you that she was very sorry for your loss.

You stayed out of school for a week, telling your friends and classmates that you’d come down with a nasty case of the flu but were otherwise fine. Only your family and your doctors knew the truth.

The ache in your chest lasted for days before fading to a strange hollowness. You spent most of the week alone in your room, trying to wrap your head around the idea that your soulmate, the one person you’d been destined for, was gone. Dead.

You’d never given much thought to soulmates or destiny, always assuming that you’d have time for those things when you were older. Now, it was all you could think about.

For nearly an entire year, you lived every day with that empty feeling in your chest, the fundamental sense that something essential was missing, torn out. You weren’t in mourning – you’d never known your soulmate, didn’t even know their name. But without that bond that you’d always taken for granted, you felt cold.

When your friends commented on how much more serious you were these days, you told them that you were preoccupied with school, with family drama, whatever excuse it took to keep them from asking too many questions. You didn’t want to tell them what had really happened. What you’d lost. It was easier to keep it a secret, quietly grieving for a lost relationship with someone you’d never met, but should have.

And then, one day, almost a full year after the night the bond was severed, it suddenly returned.

There was no pain this time, no sudden change. You simply woke up one morning with the strangest feeling that something was different.

It only took a few minutes for you to realize that the change was in your chest, where the aching emptiness that you’d grown to accept as a part of you had been replaced by a soft, gentle warmth that you’d been sure you’d never feel again. You could feel the gentle tug, like your heart had its own gravity pulling it towards the person at the other end of the bond. After so many months of nothing, it felt strange. Wrong.

For weeks, you kept it a secret, half expecting the bond to disappear again, leaving you as alone and as hollow as before. When a month had passed and the bond remained steady and strong, you told your family about it, asking them nervously what this meant for you.

Nobody knows what it means, is the unhelpful answer that you got stuck with.

It’s not unheard of for people who lose a soulmate at a young age to develop a new bond, connecting them to a new fate with a new person, but it usually takes much longer than yours did. The therapist your family took you to suggested that you may have had a small mental break, causing your brain to convince your body that your bond had been lost, but she couldn’t think of any trauma in your life that would have been significant enough to cause such an episode, or what could have suddenly brought you out of it. You wondered if maybe it isn’t the other way around – if maybe your soulmate was really and truly dead, and your poor brain was hallucinating a new bond because you couldn’t accept the reality of what you’d lost.

Whatever the reason, you decided after those therapy sessions that you didn’t need a soulmate, whether you really had one out there somewhere or not. It’s pathetic, you think, to hang all of your happiness on a single person, and you’re determined to live a full life without one. So you put it out of your mind.

And when, five years later, the tugging sensation in your chest suddenly grows much more intense, as if your soulmate is now much closer to you than they were before, you are determined to ignore it.

Jason doesn’t like being back in Gotham. The city is full of rot and filth and bad memories, and his nightmares are always worse when he’s there. But what he hates most, whether he’ll admit it to himself or not, is that even after all this time, it still feels like home.

Part of it is that his family – and he does still think of them as family, despite everything – is here, sure, but it’s made worse by the fact that the pulling sensation in his chest intensifies whenever he’s within the city limits, like the person he’s being pulled towards is there. He doesn’t like thinking about it, doesn’t like admitting that he’s terrified by it.

Terrified that he’ll find his soulmate in Gotham, of all places. Terrified that he isn’t good enough, that they won’t want him. And the other alternative, the possibility that they’ll accept him despite everything and want to stay with him, is the most terrifying of all.

The people Jason Todd loves rarely stick around, and when they do, bad things always happen to them. He doesn’t want to inflict that on anyone else, doesn’t want to have to deal with losing anyone else he cares about.

Besides, after all the things he’s done, no sane person would want to be anywhere near him. Not that he’d blame them.

And so he ignores the feeling in his chest, and whenever he’s in Gotham he tries to avoid meeting new people.

“I’ve really gotta get out of this city,” you mumble under your breath. “Or at least stop going out at night.”

You’ve had this conversation with yourself a dozen times before, and yet you still have rent to pay, and so you still find yourself agreeing every time your boss asks you to work late. The walk from your place of work to the bus station that will take you home is fine, if not entirely pleasant, during the day, but once the sun goes down it becomes more than a little harrowing. There’s no “good part of town” in Gotham, but this area in particular has been known to get especially rough when the nocturnal crowd is roaming the streets.

Maybe you should look for a new job in a nicer part of the city, you think to yourself as you pass an alley between two buildings where a group of teenagers smoke something that definitely isn’t tobacco.

Tonight’s walk is even more tense than usual, the extra stress all due to the large man in a hoodie who has been walking several paces behind you for an uncomfortably long time. He’s too big for you to feel optimistic about your chances of fighting him off if it comes to that, and this isn’t the kind of neighborhood where you can count on someone coming to your aid if you scream.

Don’t stress about it, you command yourself, even as you reach into your bag for the pepper spray that you always carry with you when you have to walk the streets of Gotham alone. Think about something else. Anything else. 

You usually make a point of not thinking about your soulmate, but right now it seems like as good a distraction as any. The tugging of the bond in your chest has intensified significantly in the last week or two, and you’ve been trying not to dwell on it. Even now, that steady warmth seems to grip your heart tightly, gently pulling you towards something you aren’t sure you want to find.

The man in the hoodie is definitely following you, you decide. You quicken your pace, only for him to match your new speed, the distance between you staying exactly the same. Your heart begins to beat faster, and you wonder if you started sprinting now if you could make it to the bus stop before he caught up to you.

You’ve gotten so worked up that you jump and nearly scream at the tall figure who ducks silently out of the doorway they’d been standing in, smoothly falling into step at your side.

“You shouldn’t be out by yourself this late, you know.” The figure says in a deep, definitely male voice.

“Neither should you.” As you say it, you take in the stranger out of the corner of your eye. He’s tall, but not as tall as you originally thought, you realize. He has broad shoulders and a muscular build that make him look bigger than he really is. But what you’re more concerned with is his outfit – he’s wearing a leather jacket that looks like it’s been torn and hastily mended in several places, and a bright red helmet that completely covers his head, including his face.

You almost groan out loud. If living in Gotham has taught you anything, it’s that people in costumes are rarely good news. And you’ve even heard of this guy before.

“Red Hood, right?” You lift an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you be selling drugs somewhere?”

“I don’t sell the drugs, sweetheart.” He sounds like he’s grinning under the helmet. “I just tell other people where to sell them. Guy’s gotta make a living somehow. We can’t all be Bruce Wayne.” The way he says it, you’re fairly sure there’s a double meaning to the quip that you aren’t picking up on.

His tone suddenly becomes serious as he moves closer to you, so that his body is angled between you and the man following you. “I’m pretty sure there’s a human trafficking ring operating in this neighborhood. I’ve been trying to, uh, deal with them, but they’re harder to pin down than I expected.” The helmet tilts down towards you, and you’re pretty sure you detect a bit of concern in his voice. “Is there somewhere safe I can walk you to?”

“Yeah,” You say softly, suddenly no longer minding his close proximity. “My bus stop is just a few more blocks. I think I can make it home from there.”

“Good. That’s good.” He moves to put his hand on your back in a casual, friendly gesture. “Just act calm and casual, okay? We’re just two friends out for a–”

He stops mid-sentence when his hand connects with your back, and you can’t say you blame him. For your own part, you’re suddenly finding it difficult to stay on your feet, as your legs seem to have decided they’re no longer interested in supporting you.

The feeling is similar to an electric shock, and you can’t help but wonder if this is what it feels like to be struck by lightning. You’re almost painfully aware of his hand, still on your back, and you could swear you can feel the heat of his skin, even through multiple layers of clothing. But the most intense change is in your chest, where you feel as if whatever invisible thread was tied around your heart has suddenly gone taught, paired with a warmth and energy that seems to be spreading into your very bones. It’s not painful. In fact, you think it might be the most comforting thing you’ve ever felt.

It only lasts for a second or two before he snatches his hand away as if he’s been burnt, and as suddenly as the strange new feeling appeared, it’s gone. It leaves you reeling, and you stumble, almost tripping and falling. He moves to steady you, but then seems to think better of it. He’s careful not to touch you again.

“You felt that too, right?” Your voice is slightly breathless, and your knees still feel weak.

He nods slowly. When he speaks, the playful and confident tone is gone. “Yeah.” His voice breaks. “Yeah, I felt it.”

“What do you think…?” But before you can even finish asking the question, you know. You know it more clearly than you’ve known anything in your entire life.

He’s your soulmate.

“Is… is there somewhere private we could go?” You try to steady your breathing. You can already feel the emptiness settling in your chest, and a small part of you is desperate to touch him again. “I think we need to talk.”

“Yeah.” His hand floats towards yours, as if he’s going to take it, before he quickly snatches it back. “Uh, yeah, I know somewhere.” He turns away, not looking back to see if you follow. “Shit. Shit.”

The “somewhere private” he takes you to is an apartment that looks like it rarely, if ever, sees use. It’s surprisingly clean and well-furnished, each room decorated in a tasteful but minimalist style, but it feels empty, more like a display room in a furniture store than an actual home.

Jason closes the door behind you a little more forcefully than is strictly necessary, and he resists the urge to glance over at you as he makes his way across the living room and collapses onto the couch. This is one of his nicer hideouts in Gotham, partially because he rarely uses it.

His hands are shaking, he realizes. In fact, his whole body feels pretty damn shaken. He can still feel lingering traces of that overwhelming warmth in his chest, can still feel small flickers of electricity shooting through his veins. He wants to reach out to you, craves more of whatever the hell happened when he touched you before, and it’s all he can do to keep his thoughts together. He can’t touch you again. If he was smart, he would tell you to leave right now, and do everything within his power to make sure you never see him again. That would be the right thing to do.

You sit down next to him, and he sucks in a shaky breath. This is the time to do it, he tells himself, he has to tell you to leave before–

Gently, cautiously, you lay your hand on his arm. It’s the lightest, softest of touches, and yet the wave of feeling and sensation that comes with it is enough to take his breath away and make him feel slightly lightheaded. He’s never felt anything so right, so perfect, and for one short, beautiful second, he hopes it never stops.

Shaking off your touch in that moment is the hardest thing he’s ever done. But he does it.

He sees the hurt and confusion in your eyes, but you quickly smooth over it. You voice is little more than a whisper as you stare at him with wide eyes. “I never thought I’d actually find you.”

“No.” His voice sounds weak and panicky to his own ears as he jumps up from the couch, taking several steps away from you. “No, no, no — you really don’t want me as a soulmate. If you knew who I was, the things I’d done–”

“I know who you are.” You speak softly, like you’re afraid to startle him.

“No.” He keeps backing away, until almost the entire room separates the two of you. “No, you don’t. You have no idea – you can’t even imagine –” He takes a deep breath, fighting to steady himself, to at least sound like he’s in control of the situation, even if he feels hopelessly lost. “If you knew what I really was, you’d run away screaming.”

“Try me.” You cross your arms over your chest. “I think I can handle it.”

“You can’t.” Jason sinks down into the chair across from the couch, his head in his hands. “I can barely handle it, and I lived it. I don’t…” He looks up at you and takes a deep breath before continuing. “I don’t want to pull you into all of that. Of this.” He waves his hand at the helmet that still covers his face, at the guns strapped to his side.

“Shouldn’t it be my choice?” Your voice sounds thick, heavy, like you’re on the verge of crying. He can’t look at you.

“I won’t do that to you.” His tone is firm, despite the ache in his chest. “Look: bad things happen to people who hang around me, okay? Just being with me could get you killed.” He slumps back in the chair, defeated. “You should go home and forget you ever met me.”

“I can’t.” You voice breaks, and when he looks up he sees that you are indeed crying. “I can’t go through that again. I don’t– I just can’t.”

“What do you mean, ‘again’?” He leans forward, eyes trained on your face.

“I thought I lost my soulmate, once before.” Your voice is shaky, and he notices that you have your hands clenched into fists at your sides. “I was just a kid. Still in high school. I woke up in the middle of the night with this… this ripping, tearing feeling in my chest, and I thought I was dying. It felt like the world was ending.” You pause to angrily swipe at the tears running down your cheeks. “After that, my bond with my soulmate was just… gone. There was nothing there. I felt empty. They told me that my soulmate had probably died. When the bond came back, out of the blue, a year later, I thought…” You trail off, ending the sentence with a shrug rather than finishing it.

Jason feels like he’s been hit by a train. From your appearance, he can guess that you’re about his age, maybe a year or two younger, which means that when you were in high school…

He’s never wondered what his soulmate felt when he died. He came out of the Lazarus Pit with the bond somehow miraculously intact, so it’s never occurred to him that his death would have severed it, or that his resurrection might have somehow mended it. He’s never wondered what it would feel like to lose your soulmate before you even met them.

Now, looking at your face, he realizes just how awful it must have been.

“I’m sorry.” The words don’t feel like enough, but he means them with every fiber of his being. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t. But now you know.” You stand up and slowly cross the room, before taking a seat on the arm of his chair. “And no matter what you’ve done, no matter how dangerous your life is… I’d rather have all of that, any day, than have to deal with losing my soulmate again. So can we at least try?” You hold out your hand, waiting for him to take it, to accept your offering of friendship, of maybe something more.

He hesitates for only a moment before he takes it.


	3. "You really don't want me as a soulmate." PART TWO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anon requested a sequel to the previous chapter. :)

For a solid month and a half after your first meeting, your relationship with Jason stays strictly platonic. He makes a habit of walking you home from work, will sometimes treat you to dinner before escorting you to your house, but he never takes his mask off, never even tells you his full name. You get the feeling that he means to avoid touching you, too, but it turns out all of those stories about how addictive the soulmate bond is weren’t exaggerations – he’s as drawn to you as you are to him, and his hands always seem to find their way into yours.

He’s cautious, almost to the point of being paranoid, but you get the feeling that the only way a relationship between the two of you is going to work is if he’s able to reassure himself that he’s not putting you in danger in any way by being around you. And anyway, he’s careful never to impose on your personal freedom – his paranoia seems concerned only with his interactions with you. You know he worries about you being seen with him, that he’s afraid of what might happen if his enemies realized that you could be used as leverage over him. So you humor him, even if it means that you only see him at night, and only in out-of-the-way places where the two of you have a certain degree of privacy.

Still, it really bothers you that he won’t let you see his face.

It’s not that you really care what he looks like. He’s smart and witty and surprisingly well-read, plus he’s a total sweetheart under all that leather and muscle, all of which is much more important to you than anything like eye color or bone structure. What really bothers you is the mere fact that he doesn’t want you to see what’s under the mask.

“I promise it doesn’t matter to me if you’re ugly,” You half-joke one night, as he’s walking you home. “Even if you look like the Phantom of the Opera, I’ll still let you hang out with me.”

“I am much hotter than the Phantom,” He argues, gently knocking his arm against yours. “I swear, I look like an Abercrombie model under this mask.”

He doesn’t tell you that he wants you to see his face – and not because he’s really expecting you to swoon over how attractive he is, but because he hates knowing that when you look at him, you see the Red Hood, not the man under the mask. It feels like he’s lying to you, like he’s hiding, but letting you see him – the real him – feels like a point of no return, and he’s not ready to take that leap yet. Not until he knows that you’re safe and that his presence isn’t putting you in harm’s way.

Instead he tries to make up for it by giving you other little pieces of himself – a story about his childhood, a quote from a favorite book, a joke at his own expense, lingering touches that seem to say more than words can. He hopes that the scraps of information are enough to give you an idea of who he is, that you’re able to put together a complete picture of him even if you don’t have a face to put with it.

He’s not sure if he’s succeeding, but your hand is in his and you’re smiling at him like you’re two normal people with a normal friendship, and he thinks that for now that’s enough.

“So, who’s your new friend?”

The question comes from a familiar red-and-black clad figure that somehow managed to sneak up on him in the dark, and he really should have known that Tim would be the one to uncover his friendship (relationship?) with you. The kid really is too smart for his own good, and seems grimly determined to take an interest in Jason’s wellbeing.

“My soulmate,” He deadpans. There’s no point in lying; chances are good Tim had already realized as much on his own.

Sure enough, he seems unsurprised. “You’re being uncharacteristically careful lately. You’re worried about them.”

“Shit, Timmy, of course I am.” Jason finally turns to face his not-really-brother, officially giving up on tonight’s stakeout. “You know what we do. What happens when we try to bring the people we love into it.”

“Stephanie is fine, thanks.” Tim replies, but Jason doesn’t miss the defensive edge to his voice. “Fine” is relative in their line of work.

“Maybe so, but I think one death and resurrection is more than enough for one relationship. And, unlike Stephanie, my friend doesn’t have any kind of combat training, so excuse me if I proceed with due caution.”

“No one’s saying you shouldn’t be cautious.” Tim’s defensive tone is gone, replaced by something that’s half sage and half exasperation. “But you don’t have to protect them all by yourself, you know. You could ask for help sometimes. But since I know you won’t, I’ll talk to Cass and Damian about checking in on them. From behind the scenes, of course. At least until you’re ready to introduce us.”

“Why?” Jason doesn’t mean to sound as confrontational as he does – but he’s barely made peace with the Bat Clan, and calling on them for help is definitely foreign territory.

“Because you’re family.” The way Tim says it makes it fairly obvious that there’s an unspoken ‘idiot’ tacked onto the end of the sentence. “And if they’re your soulmate, then so are they. You should bring them over for dinner some time. When you’re ready.”

“Thanks.” Jason means it – he claps Tim on the shoulder, about as close as the two of them have ever gotten to a hug. “But, uh, could you maybe hold off on telling Bruce? At least for now?”

Tim nods slowly. “I’ll let you get around to breaking it to him. You’ve gotta get back on speaking terms with him at some point.”

Says you, Jason thinks, but he decides not to ruin the moment. “Thank you.”

“No problem.” Tim shrugs off his hand and reaches for his grappling hook, then pauses. “Oh, and one more thing.”

“Yeah?””

“Get rid of the mask. Seriously,” Tim makes a face. “Take it from me, trying to keep your real identity out of the relationship just complicates things. You’re better off just coming clean.”

And then he’s gone.

You’re rudely awoken shortly after three in the morning by the sound of someone opening your bedroom window.

You’re halfway out of bed with your heart pounding before you can make out the familiar red mask and sink back against your pillow, muttering about stupid vigilantes scaring you to death as you watch Jason finish prying the window open so he can duck into your room and tiptoe over to your bed.

“Hi.” He sinks down on the foot of your bed, slumping like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“Hi,” You whisper back. “Not that I’m not happy to see you, but is there any particular reason why you decided to break into my house in the middle of the night?”

“I, uh, needed to see you.” His voice sounds sheepish and shy, even with the mechanical tone that the mask gives it. “And I was scared that I’d chicken out if I waited.”

Without a word, you scoot over, pulling back the covers in a clear invitation for him to join you. Somewhat to your amusement, he kicks off his boots and shrugs off his jacket before getting into your bed, letting out a shaky breath as he slides in next to you. It’s a tight enough squeeze that he can’t avoid touching you, and you can practically feel the nervousness radiating off of him as he lays down at your side.

You pause to drape the covers back over the both of you before you speak. “Okay. What’s going on?”

“Are you scared of me?” His voice is barely more than a whisper, and you don’t need to see his face to know that he’s afraid he already knows the answer.

“No.” You reply truthfully, finding his hands under the blankets and squeezing them gently. “I worry about you – I’m not stupid, I know what you do is dangerous. I’m scared for you. But not of being with you.”

“You don’t feel like maybe you got a bad deal with this soulmate thing? Like you deserve… better? Than me, I mean.” He’s stumbling over his words, and you get the feeling that it’s hard for him to admit these fears to himself, yet alone another person.

“No.” You squeeze his hands again. “I like you, Jason. I like talking to you, and spending time with you, and just being around you. I think you’re exactly what I need from a soulmate.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

He lets out another shaky breath, then slides his hands from yours and slowly, slowly reaches around to the back of his helmet. You hold your breath as he unlatches it with a click and slowly, almost shyly, removes it, leaving his face completely exposed.

For a moment, you just take it in. Messy black hair, hard jaw, the most gorgeous green-blue eyes you’ve ever seen. Eyes that are currently staring into yours as he holds his breath, waiting for a reaction.

“You’re beautiful.” It’s the first thing you can think to say, and his whole body relaxes as soon as the words pass your lips. He seems to relax into you, finally letting his body curl towards yours in the small space of your bed.

Unable to help yourself, you lift your hands to cup his face, closing the distance between you even further. He shivers at your touch, and it feels like something momentous has happened, something much bigger and more meaningful than a man taking off a mask. Under the blankets, his arms slide gently around your waist.

“Can I kiss you?” You’re surprised by how breathless your voice sounds.

“Please.” Even as he says it he’s leaning closer, so you can feel the ghost of his breath on your lips.

The first kiss is slow and tentative, barely more than the softest brush of your lips against his, testing the waters. It’s immediately followed by a second, this one longer and more confident, but still you’re struck by how soft he is. The touch of his hands on your waist is light, as if you were some fragile thing that would break if he was too rough with you, and when he kisses you it’s with a similar gentleness. There’s a hint of desperation in it too, like he’s afraid you’ll melt away in his hands at any moment.

“I’m here,” You whisper between kisses. “I’m not going anywhere.”

His only response is to slide one arm around your back and pull you towards him, like he needs to be as physically close to you as possible. You aren’t entirely sure he’s aware that he’s doing it.

You aren’t sure how long you lay there, peppering each other’s faces and mouths with kisses and filling the spaces between with whispered confessions. When you finally stop, he doesn’t make an effort to pull away from you, instead keeping his arms around you, holding you close.

You snuggle closer to him, propping your head up next to his on the pillow. “Will you stay?”

This time his answer comes without hesitation.

“Always.”


End file.
